UnsolvedJay Ernest & Jaymie Chantelle Grahlman

Jay Grahlman, 38, and his 6-year-old daughter, Jaymie, died from injuries suffered in a late-night fire set at their Cedar Rapids home on Saturday, April 5, 2003.

Jaymie – whose autopsy report included a number of pathological diagnoses – died Sunday, April 6, after being removed from life support. Jay died the following Wednesday, April 9, from complications due to burns he sustained in the fire.

Also in the home at the time of the fire was Jay’s girlfriend, Vickie Reed, 32, Vickie’s daughters, Kylie, 9, Nicole, 7 and Jay’s youngest daughter, Ida Mae, 3.

The 3755 H Avenue NE house sat at the end of a quiet dead-end street. Vicki stated in published reports that she pulled Jay and three of the daughters to safety but couldn’t find Jaymie. Once Jay realized Jaymie remained inside, he ran back into the burning home to search for her. His efforts – tragically unsuccessful – cost Jay his own life. While frantically searching for his young daughter, he sustained second- and third-degree burns over 37% of his body on his face, scalp, neck and shoulders.

Firefighters, searching on hands and knees, found Jaymie alive but unconscious early Sunday morning in the home’s bathtub. She lay stretched out on her back, face up, almost as if he’d peacefully gone to sleep in the bathtub and had not heard the screams all around as Vickie rushed others to safety.

Family friend and neighbor, Brian Zirtzman – a 39-year-old man with an IQ of just 67 – was later charged with two counts of first-degree murder and one count of first-degree arson but was acquitted by a Lin County District Court jury after testimony inferred Brian had likely been coached before going to police with a memorized confession “too complex” to be made by a man with an IQ of 67.

The family had spent the day of April 5, 2003, socializing and barbecuing with Jay’s brother, Duane, and the developmentally disabled Brian. Brian, unemployed, lived with his parents, Delbert and Orian Zirtzman, across the street and two houses up from the Grahlman’s home at 3748 H Avenue NE.

Vickie said the family of six had stayed up until just after 10 PM that night, enjoying each other’s company before heading to bed. She would later testify it wasn’t until after 11 PM when she got the girls ready for bed. “About an hour later, I heard a crash and smelled smoke,” Vickie said. “The whole bedroom, hallway and house was filled with smoke.” The fire was reported at 11:55 PM.

The Gazette reported what Vickie described of how the series of events unfolded:

That she first rescued daughter Kylie, 9, and Ida Mae, 3, from the burning home;

That she then found her husband on the living room floor and pulled him to safety;

That she went back in and rescued her daughter, Nicole, 7, even as the flames grew;

That she then entered the home a final time – a house now filled with smoke and flames – to look for Jaymie.

Vickie said she looked under a bunk bed, broke out a window and moved furniture looking for Jaymie but could not locate her. “I couldn’t breathe anymore,” she said of her retreat. By the time the fire department arrived, flames were already shooting through the roof and from windows on three sides of the house.

Once firefighters discovered Jaymie’s body, she was immediately flown by air ambulance to University Hospitals in Iowa City. Jay was transported to University Hospitals shortly after being admitted to St. Luke’s Hospital. None of the other girls or Vickie suffered any injuries, though Vickie was treated for smoke inhalation before being released.

The fire department said that investigators determined the fire was started in a kitchen wastebasket but after further examination, they had determined the fire started in a utility/laundry room and quickly spread to the kitchen and living room.

Two-and-a-half months after the fire, Brian Zirtzman became a suspect when officials discovered that he’d set two fires in his early teen years – once in 1977 when he was 13 years old, and once in 1979 when he was 15 years old. When the fire department officials first questioned Brian on June 19, 2003, about the fire, Brian – bizarrely articulate in what sounded like a recitation – confessed to starting the fire so he could save the family and become a hero.

Vickie’s initial reports to police and fire officials did not indicate Brian was in the home when she first awoke and smelled smoke, nor had she mentioned Brian being present to help with any of the trips into the home to rescue family members. It wasn’t Brian, however, who discovered the fire, nor had he warned or been credited for having made the rescues.

During Brian’s trial, Vickie told the jury that Brian, who didn’t drink, was the last one awake, but didn’t explain how she knew that or why she wouldn’t have asked him to go home once everyone else went to bed. She also testified that after she’d pulled Kylie, Ida Mae, Jay and Nicole out of the house, she saw Brian on his porch and called him for help. Brian helped her move a small garden table to the window of Jaymie’s bedroom, where she and Brian broke out the window and tried to enter.

In each of the two arson cases from when Brian was a teen – both of which were set in the same neighborhood where Brian and his family still lived – neither fire had been set with anyone present in the home. One neighbor said the then-teen had actually waited until he knew no one was home before lighting the fires.

In her 1979 house fire, neighbor Georgie McNamara said fire investigators told her Brian had waited until she left, then gone behind her house, leaned in a window and held a cigarette lighter to bedroom curtains to start the fire. The fire, she said, gutted her home and destroyed most of her family’s possessions. More than two decades later, when Jay and Vickie moved into their home, Georgie said she’d warned Vickie to be careful of Brian – and told her that about his juvenile arson record.

Throughout his trial, Brian’s inattentive behavior and carefree demeanor depicted more that of a distracted, bored child than a man on trial for murder. Prosecutors said Brian set the fire so he could save the family, whom he visited frequently. That plan went awry when the flames spread too quickly. The details weren’t adding up for the jurors. If the flames had spread so quickly and kept Brian from making any attempt to make a rescue, how did Vickie manage to make it back into the house three times with no burns of any kind? Brian was acquitted of the murder and arson charges.

Anyone with any information about Jay and Jaymie Grahlman’s unsolved murders is urged to contact the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation at 515.725.6010.